This joint effort of a large urban community mental health center and a university seeks to develop a system for evaluating effectiveness of mental health services through continuous monitoring of outcome data. Clients are classified according to major problem type and are followed up in the community to determine level of functioning on six major dimensions of personal and community adjustment. Outcome is related to treatment career to determine relative effectiveness and costs of treatment alternatives. In later phases, models of treatment operations are constructed using empirical evaluation data, and are manipulated to try to determine optimum treatment patterns and allocations of program resources. Results are fed back to managers and clinical staff, and program change decisions are studied to assess the influence of evaluative data upon these decisions and subsequent program performance. Emphasis throughout all project phases is on rapid execution of evaluation studies and timely feedback of findings to program staff. Automation of basic data systems and program modelling activities are a basic feature of the project.